Public Interest Law School Rankings

Option A Methodology

Overview

This report ranks law schools using an Option A: True Cost to Enter the Field framework. The ranking prioritizes whether graduates can realistically enter and remain in public-interest legal work.

The composite score uses four components:

Component	Default weight	Definition
PI employment quality	45%	% public interest/public service employment × first-time bar passage rate
Debt burden	35%	Inverted estimated debt burden; lower debt receives a higher score
Federal clerkship rate	10%	Percent of graduates in federal clerkships
Scholarship accessibility	10%	Percent receiving more than half tuition discount, including full rides

Employment score is shown for reference but is not used in the composite ranking.

Summary

Schools ranked

195

ABA-accredited

Avg PI placement

20.5%

all ranked schools

Avg employment score

86.6%

reference only

Avg full debt

$223K

3-year estimate

Rankings Table

PI Placement vs. Debt

Each point is one school. Point size reflects the composite score. The ideal schools sit toward the upper-left: higher public-interest placement and lower estimated debt.

Top 30: Score Breakdown

Methodology Notes

• All sub-scores are normalized from 0 to 100 across the ranked schools.
• PI employment quality is calculated as % public interest/public service employment × first-time bar passage rate.
• Employment score is included in the report as a reference metric only; it is not used in the composite score.
• Federal clerkship rate is scored separately rather than folded into the PI outcome measure.
• Full debt is used where available; otherwise, the report falls back to estimated three-year out-of-state price.
• Scholarship access is defined as the share receiving more than half tuition discount plus full rides.
• First-time bar passage is read from the ABA 509 tab when a column such as 1st time bar, Bar Passage Rate, or First-time bar passage exists. If the column is absent, the scoring uses a neutral bar-passage value of 1 and the table displays NA.

Data Export

A CSV version of the rankings is written to public_interest_law_school_rankings_output.csv when this report is rendered.